“Buyers Don’t Hate Sellers, They Hate Bad Selling!”

Paraphrasing my friend Hank Barnes, “Buyers don’t hate sellers, they hate bad selling!”

Sellers struggle to reach and engage prospects and customers.  Every outreach is ignored.  Buyers actively seek other channels to learn about solutions and products, avoiding sellers as much as possible.  When they do engage, it’s as late in their buying process as possible.

We have our own personal experiences, being the victims of meaningless outreaches, horrible sales pitches.  Ironically, we screen all our calls (thanks IOS 26 for your help), we have spam filters and agents emptying our inboxes, we ignore the social media DMs and Invitations—but wonder why our customers don’t want to talk when we do the same.

What buyers hate, what each of us hate are the things that make us feel manipulated or pressured.  We hate those that don’t try to understand us and what we try to do.  We hate the feeling of being a transaction, a widget that is passed from one person to another.  We hate the feeling that sellers just don’t care about us, they care about hitting their own numbers.

Bad selling isn’t just annoying, it slows customers down.  It drives them to choosing to do nothing, unless they absolutely have to.

Yet, buyers need and want help.  They are excited to accept it from those who are actually being helpful.  And this is where a small number number of sellers distinguish themselves–they are actually helpful.

These sellers are different.  They engage prospects and customers differently.

First, they bring deeper understanding of customers’ businesses and challenges.  They engage prospects and customers in talking about what they do, their goals, their challenges.  They bring ideas to these customers–insights, experience.  They don’t drown the customer in information, but help the customer figure out what is most important.  They help the customer think about the issues, framing the change initiatives, managing the complexity.  They help them navigate the process.  They constantly focus on building trust and confidence, through the process.

And in doing this, they accelerate the buying process, while also driving their own win rates much higher.

The contrast can’t be more stark.

Yet, somehow too many fail to recognize this reality, they double down on activities, they leverage AI and Agents to continue to do more.  They confuse busyness with effectiveness.

But the good news is it isn’t difficult to make this shift.  Buyers want and need help.  Sellers who shift, seeking to be genuinely helpful, trying to understand, leveraging their experience to help customers navigate the process will stand out.

The choice is yours.  Buyers don’t hate sellers, they welcome those that bring clarity, insight and real help.

Afterword:  This is the AI generated discussion of this post.  I particularly liked the ideas they generated about making the switch–it’s in the last few minutes of this discussion.  Enjoy!